Harborside Goes Public on Canadian Securities Exchange

California cannabis company Harborside Inc., has gone public on the Canadian Securities Exchange following a reverse takeover involving FLRish and Lineage Grow Company Ltd, the company announced on Monday. Harborside operates a cultivation facility in Salinas and dispensaries in Oakland and San Jose, along with Terpene Station dispensaries in Portland and Eugene, Oregon.

Andrew Berman, CEO of Harborside, called the move “a very big milestone” for both his 12-year-old company and the cannabis industry.

“It’s extremely rewarding to combine this rich legacy with the opportunity for new growth capital from the public markets,” he said in a statement.

The reverse merger with Lineage was valued at about $150 million, according to a CNN report. Over the past 12 years, the company’s Bay Area dispensaries had over $300 million in sales. Last year, Harborside reported about $38 million, according to the filing.

Steve DeAngelo, who co-founded Harborside as a medical cannabis dispensary in 2006 and serves as its chairman emeritus, told CNN that the company going public “marks a very important milestone in the growth of the cannabis industry.”

“When you have an organization like Harborside that came from deep activist roots and was engaged in that activism in a very intense way, and now has been able to transition into a profit-making cannabis company that’s going to be valued at $300 million Canadian, is a tremendous validation.” – DeAngelo, via CNN

The company has agreements for two more dispensaries in San Leandro and Desert Hot Springs, along with agreements to purchase the 43,000-plus cultivation facility of Agris Farms in Yolo County, and a LUX dispensary in San Jose.

According to CSE CEO Richard Carleton, 170 cannabis firms are trading on the CSE and about 40 percent have material operations in the U.S. In 2018, U.S. cannabis companies raised $3.2 billion and have, so far, raised $1 billion this year.